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Coalition demands $10.10 minimum wage for Newark airport workers

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Demetrius DeBiase, a 42-year-old father of three who lives in Newark, has worked for six years as a baggage handler at Newark Liberty International Airport, where he earns the state's minimum wage of $8.25 an hour. A coalition of labor and civil rights leaders, elected officials and others are calling on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to set a minimum of $10.10 an hour for workers at Newark Liberty.
(William Perlman/The Star-Ledger)

A coalition of baggage handlers, cabin cleaners, civil rights and labor leaders, and local, state, and federal elected officials are calling on Gov. Chris Christie to follow President Obama’s lead and require a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour for workers at Newark Liberty International Airport.

The coalition, which will hold a news conference at the airport Monday morning, is seizing on a move last month by Christie's Democratic counterpart from New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and his chief Port Authority lieutenant to mandate the $10.10 wage at John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia Airports in New York City. That move, outlined in a Jan. 28 letter from Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye, a Cuomo appointee, to airline executives, did not include Newark Liberty.

Christie, a Republican who vetoed the last minimum wage bill to cross his desk, has been silent on the airport pay issue, hinting at yet another interstate-rift at the Port Authority following sharp divisions at the agency exposed by the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal.

The coalition, led by Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, will gather at 9:30 at the offices of United Airlines, the airport’s dominant carrier. The group is also calling for health benefits, paid sick leave and Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a holiday.

"Recently, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Patrick Foye, Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, committed to raising wages to $10.10 for contracted airport workers at LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports," U.S. Senators Robert Menendez and Cory Booker, both Democrats from New Jersey, wrote in a Feb. 7 letter to Christie and his appointee as Port Authority chairman, David Samson. "We are concerned that the contracted workers at Newark Liberty International Airport were not included."

Demetrius DeBiase is one of those workers. DeBiase said his job as a baggage handler for Huntleigh USA Corp. at Newark Liberty pays him $8.25 an hour, the minimum wage in New Jersey, which was raised by dollar in November after voters approved a referendum. The 42-year-old father of three, who lives with his wife and two younger children in Newark, said he gets no benefits.

“You can’t possibly feed your family, clothe your family, buy your bus pass to get back and forth to work,” said DeBiase, whose company has a contract with United Airlines. “We don’t get health benefits, we don’t get sick days, we don’t get personal days. We get three or four holiday. We don’t get vacation time.”

Neither Huntleigh nor United responded to requests for comment.

Foye's Jan. 28 letter to the CEOs of four airlines serving the agency's two major airports in New York called on them to, "Immediately effect an increase in the hourly wage paid by your contractors to their lowest paid employees by $1 per hour, with a phase-in to $10.10 an hour."

"The Port Authority is prepared to use every tool at its disposal to achieve these goals," the letter added. "Specifically, the Port will enforce these changes through revisions to terms and conditions of Port-Airline agreements."

One official at the bi-state agency said Foye’s letter took the New Jersey side by surprise. The official also questioned the legality of Foye’s selective order, directing a minimum wage requirement at the agency’s major New York airports, but not at Newark Liberty.

The Port Authority did not respond to requests to elaborate on Foye's directive.

At the same time, a spokesman for Christie declined to say whether the governor supported a $10.10 minimum wage at the airport.

A Feb. 6 letter from Christie's newly appointed Port Authority deputy executive executive director, Deborah Gramiccioni, suggests that New Jersey may be open to similar wage and benefit requirements at Newark as those directed by Foye for JFK and LaGuardia.

“We fully support reasonable wages for workers at all of our airports, and, more generally, remain committed to using all tools at the Port Authority’s disposal to bolster New Jersey’s economy and provide good-paying jobs to its residents,” stated Gramiccioni’s letter, which was in response to a inquiry from U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-9th District), who was concerned that Newark had been left out of the wage requirement.

But, Gramiccioni's letter added, “the Port Authority must carefully consider all perspective on this importing issue, including the complex labor, business and legal issues implicated by Mr. Foye’s directive.”

Gramiccioni's predecessor, Bill Baroni, resigned amid the bridge scandal, the origins of which remain under investigation by a legislative panel, the U.S. Attorney's office and others. In that case, it was Foye who was surprised by the lane closures, after Baroni and others testified that he was kept in the dark about them.

While municipalities commonly impose minimum wages on companies with public contracts, the airline industry questioned the Port Authority’s legal right to set a minimum wage for anyone doing business at its airports.

“Wages are set by federal or state legislatures, that’s the appropriate way to do it, not by the Port Authority,” said Jean Medina, a spokeswoman for Airlines for America, industry’s main lobbying group. “Airlines are basically tenants at the airport, so in this instance the analogy would be if you are renting an apartment, and your landlord tells you that you can only hire a plumber that charges so much money.”